I am a Senior Political Contributor at Forbes and the official 'token lefty,' as the title of the page suggests. However, writing from the 'left of center' should not be confused with writing for the left as I often annoy progressives just as much as I upset conservative thinkers. In addition to the pages of Forbes.com, you can find me every Saturday morning on your TV arguing with my more conservative colleagues on "Forbes on Fox" on the Fox News Network and at various other times during the week serving as a liberal talking head on other Fox News and Fox Business Network shows. I also serve as a Democratic strategist with Mercury Public Affairs.

Proposed New Mexico Law Would Send Rape Victims Who Abort Pregnancies To Prison For 'Tampering With Evidence'

New Mexico GOP Repesentative Cathrynn Brown has introduced a bill in the State’s House of Representatives that would prohibit women who have been raped from obtaining an abortion—or face a sentence of up to three years in prison as punishment for committing the offending act.

The legal theory behind the proposed legislation?

Tampering with evidence of a crime…seriously.

While the legislation is fairly assured not to become law as New Mexico’s legislative bodies are controlled by Democrats, the myriad of issues such a bill presents is truly extraordinary—staring with the very notion of an unborn fetus being classified as ‘evidence’.

Evidence is defined as follows:

“n. every type of proof legally presented at trial (allowed by the judge) which is intended to convince the judge and/or jury of alleged facts material to the case. It can include oral testimony of witnesses, including experts on technical matters, documents, public records, objects, photographs and depositions (testimony under oath taken before trial). It also includes so-called “circumstantial evidence” which is intended to create belief by showing surrounding circumstances which logically lead to a conclusion of fact. Comments and arguments by the attorneys, statements by the judge and answers to questions which the judge has ruled objectionable are not evidence. Charts, maps and models which are used to demonstrate or explain matters are not evidence themselves, but testimony based upon such items and marks on such material may be evidence. Evidence must survive objections of opposing attorneys that it is irrelevant, immaterial or violates rules against “hearsay” (statements by a party not in court), and/or other technicalities.”

Clearly missing from the definition is the use of a living human being as an object capable of submission as evidence in any legal trial scenario. Considering that—for so long as I can recall—pro-life advocates have argued that a fetus is a living person from the moment of inception, one wonders why Rep. Brown would now suggest that the fetus is an ‘object’ subject to entry into evidence in a rape trial as it seems reasonable to imagine that such a concept would be highly offensive to both pro-life and pro-abortion forces.

More importantly, consider that proving that a victim is—or was—pregnant is completely irrelevant to making a rape case! Unless New Mexico intends to only prosecute accused rapists or practitioners of incest who impregnate their victims, the existence of a fetus is no evidence of rape or incest whatsoever. Not only is pregnancy not evidentiary of rape, it could not even rise to the level of creating a presumption of a crime. If it could, then any pregnant woman would be presumed to have been raped while a women who did not become pregnant would be presumed not have been sexually assaulted.

So, how can aborting a pregnancy ever be tampering with evidence when a pregnancy—or lack thereof—is never evidence in the first place when prosecuting a case for rape or incest?

What must be proven in a rape case has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not the victim became pregnant. Further, if evidence of pregnancy has some value to the case (which it rarely would), evidence is plentiful through the existence of the many records that would establish that the victim had, in fact, been pregnant including, ironically, the medical transcripts of an abortion.

“Sexual assault experts may use the terms interchangeably, but generally recognize that the two terms are on a continuum of criminal sexual behavior, including forcible sexual penetration against (and between) females, forcible sexual penetration against (and between) males, non-forcible sexual assault against minors (and the physically helpless and the mentally incapacitated), sexual penetration of the vagina and anus with an object or body part other than the penis, marital rape, statutory rape, incest, fellatio, and anal intercourse.”

Nowhere do the definitions indicate that pregnancy—or lack thereof—is an element of a crime or indicative that a crime may have taken place.

Pat Davis of ProgressNow New Mexico, a progressive nonprofit that is opposing the bill, told The Huffington Post that such a move is blatantly unconstitutional, adding, “The bill turns victims of rape and incest into felons and forces them to become incubators of evidence for the state. According to Republican philosophy, victims who are ‘legitimately raped’ will now have to carry the fetus to term in order to prove their case.“

Huffington Post is also reporting that Rep. Brown has today issued a statement seeking to defend her legislative offering, suggesting that the purpose of the bill is to punish the individual who commits the rape or incest and then assists or facilitates an abortion to destroy evidence of the crime. To that end, Brown said, “New Mexico needs to strengthen its laws to deter sex offenders. By adding this law in New Mexico, we can help to protect women across our state.”

Apparently, Ms. Brown is under the impression that rapists stick around to assist their victims with the difficult and horrifying aftermath of the crime.

If it is, indeed, Representative Brown’s true intent to punish only the rapists who somehow play a role in procuring an abortion for their victims—as she has noted in her statement—Brown is going to need a few lessons in writing legislation as her bill clearly reflects a very different intent.

“B. Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, (thereby including the victim, physician or anyone else facilitating an abortion) or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime. (emphasis added)”

If Representative Brown seeks criminal status solely for those who compel or coerce another to obtain an abortion in a case of rape—and the law is not designed to target the victim herself as Brown has suggested—she certainly would have wanted to omit the first part of Paragraph “B” which clearly turns a rape victim into a criminal should she ‘tamper with the evidence’ by obtaining an abortion.

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I’m going to be polite and not say what you are showing. Here is the definition of legislation: “. The act or process of legislating; lawmaking. 2. A proposed or enacted law or group of laws.”

A proposed bill most certainly is legislation. Gee…maybe that is why you so often hear the phrase “proposed legislation”!

And, I’m sorry but I have to say it, the sheer stupidity of noting that any proposed bill goes through multiple revisions has so little to do with the point of this article as to make any rational human being question your ability to grasp the simplist concepts.

I gotta be honest, Chuck. I had thought you were a reasonably bright attorney. But you have made it so amazingly clear that you are a troll as to blow any impact you might have on readers open to rational discourse. Attempting to turn this into a discourse on what you perceive as my support of abortion (which just reveals that you have never paid any attention because you sadly miss the mark on my take on abortion) clearly puts you on the troll list which means that I not only won’t respond to your comments, I will not even be reading them. I just don’t have the time for insincere people who seek to use my column not for intelligent conversation but to try and sell arguments that my readers are much to smart to buy. Have you noticed that eve the most conservative readers here-the ones who love to trash me-are smart enough not to come to your defense here. It’s because you not only embarrass yourself with this foolishness, you embarrass them and hurt their cause. Too bad..but you are now, as the saying goes, “dead to me”. Was putting forth such an absurd argument worth it? I guess you thought so, but if it is intelligent discourse you’re looking for, you completely blew it here. The good news for you is that you can now comment and say whatever you want. As I won’t see it (I block you so I won’t have to be bothered but your comments wills till appear as written), you can say whatever you want. Have a ball.

I don’t care if I am “dead to you.” Somehow I doubt that you will be able to resist responding to any future comments I might post to your articles. (See prior posts of yours where you declared you are done….but then return to berate my replies, but hardly address the substance of my comments, but go off on a disputation on whether the proposed law is “legislation.”) (I acknowledge that a definition of “legislation” is broad enough to include proposed laws that are not passed—but if a proposed law is “proposed legislation”, then what is “legislation”?). Frankly, Rick, I find that your responses are often not particularly responsive to comments that diverge from your point of view. The proposed law may not accomplish a lot in the way of protecting rape victims from coerced abortions, but I don’t find the attempt to do so objectionable. It did, however, give liberals an opportunity to paint the “proposed legislation” as a proposed law that would send rape victims to prison for aborting the product of the rape, while ignoring the tenor of the whole bill and the author’s own statements concerning her intent AND the revision that makes that intent clear.

I will occasionally drop in and comment. Someone has to balance the liberal take on current events that you present as the “token liberal” here at Forbes. Others who drop in can read them or ignore them as they wish, and so can you.

By the way, I watch you most Saturday mornings on Fox News, where you sometimes make a cogent point or two.

Just yesterday, an eleven-year-old asked me, “if the Republicans have so much respect for the law, how can they fight so hard to keep guns that kill people while they fight so hard to stop abortion? Isn’t that the law too?” ’nuff said.

Well I’ve already read that she’s saying that it was a misprint/mistake and certainly did not mean what was written and will change the document to show that she did not mean abortions.

that being said it’s obvious that she did indeed mean this exactly but just thought it could slip through. Come on Republicans you can do better than this, why is this person even allowed in the party?